


The Explorer

by Happyorogeny



Series: The Drow [4]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), The Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Finding a home for oneself, Gen, Mention of Animal Death, Spiders, Worldbuilding, mention of poison, mention of religion, violent impulses, whats a druid?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 20:40:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18289838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Happyorogeny/pseuds/Happyorogeny
Summary: A drow who doesn't realise he's a druid explores a forest.





	The Explorer

The Overworld wasn’t so bad. 

When he had first reached the surface it had seemed a blasted and barren place. He had thought with horror that what was said of the Overworld was true, that this was a place of death and burning. It had been all he could do to locate a limestone cave and take refuge as the sun rose, and look on in dread at the blinding incandescence and the bare rock of the mountains. How could anything survive up here? There was nowhere to hide. 

Now he knew that that had been the time called Winter, and that in winter the ground was bare and the wind cold and hunger an eternal companion, closer than even his shadow. But just as poisons could be medicine, all curses carried blessings. In the winter the nights were long and dark and the sky glittered with starlight, just soft enough that even darksight eyes could adjust to them. And the days were so short that he could take to some shallow overhang or hollow tree to rest, and rise again as the sun was setting. 

He had been blessed indeed, to reach the surface when he did. 

Blessed by what, he did not know. Lolth usually didn’t pay too much attention to drow men and they in turn largely preferred it that way.

Now that it was Spring the trees had fetched additional growths- leaves- and soft white flowers that fell over the forest floor and softened his step. The trees were pleasing to him indeed, as they offered him shade and protection from the burning sun-eye. He doubted the surface gods would take kindly to seeing him here. And though they were well known to be weaklings he didn’t care to irritate anything divine. A drow didn’t live long if he didn’t know when he was outmatched.

Besides, why would he want to travel from this forest? It was full of food and he was enchanted by the many different variations of green, the texture of lichen on bark, the way that the wind through the canopy sounded exactly like water over rock.

He had never heard such a thing before. There was no wind in the Underdark. What a notion, that even the air up here was free to move as it pleased. 

What a boon, that it was so quiet he could hear it. Hear even his own breathing, his own heartbeat. 

But ah, much as poison could be a medicine, boons came with curses in their wake. He hadn’t heard another voice in some time now. No streetcorner preachers, no mercenaries fighting over the split of their latest proceeds, no endless singing of priestesses in worship, no screaming from rooftop battles or side-alley assassinations. No tunnel-hunters or mushroom farmers trying to sell him their latest wares as they drifted past in houseboats on the great underground river that cut through the city. 

This mountainside and the adjoining valley were very quiet. His explorations had turned up rocky caves, underground streams, waterfalls and what seemed to be abandoned paths. The overworlders claimed to have mighty cities, but he would believe that when he saw it. 

All the same, these roads had to go somewhere. And so he had started to walk, mapping the forest as he went. 

After two moon-cycles worth of exploration he discovered a wood elf village high in the treetops, a situation that brought him to a complete halt in the night. Surface elves, most hated of the overworlders. And yet he recognised the shape of houses up in the canopy, and the bridges running between their homes didn’t seem so unlike the webbing that stretched between the stalactite spires of the Underdark. Even the voices weren’t so different. If he closed his eyes and pretended they didn’t need those torches to see, they could almost be drow. 

The thought had brought with it repulsion. The surface elves had not sided with the drow when they demanded stability in the Fey Wilds. And for their cowardly neutrality the Old Elf God – he was not worthy of a name – had thrown them all out. And now they begged and grovelled for forgiveness, to be let back in, whereas the drow had pride and had made themselves a place in this world. 

They weren’t like drow. They couldn’t be. 

And yet that sounded like a consort squabbling with his house matron, and there was the fussing of a hungry child, and there a young man sneaking off to meet a young woman in the woods much as would happen with an illicit house romance. 

They were foolish and careless. He could have followed them less than a breath behind if he cared to, and killed them both. 

But he didn’t care to. 

He tried to see into their houses, but the light blinded him. He couldn’t see how the men and women looked at one another. And something about them made him restless and anxious and he could do nothing except leave and head deeper into the valley, flattening his ears so that he didn’t have to hear them. 

Perhaps there were other drow up here too, drow like him that needed room to breathe and grow, room that didn’t exist in the Underdark. How could anything grow down there, when the caves were filled fit to burst with the constant churning chaos of interpersonal rivalries, religion and murder and lust?

Maybe the other drow that had gone before him had followed the path and left this valley. But he didn’t think he was quite ready for that. 

No, he needed time to prepare, for the creatures of the forest said that Summer was coming. 

He was blessed indeed to have such a skill, that the voices of birds and animals rang clear in his mind. It had been just the very same in the Underdark, where he was a beast tamer of some minor note and renowned for his ability to calm even the most fresh-caught spider. 

That had saved him after he had fled into the tunnels, inquisitors on his heels. Notoriously dangerous and a death sentence for most drow, that empty system of caves had become a haven for him. The creatures of the dark accepted him as a beast among them. Not a wretched houseless drow, not a mediocre man lacking talent and beauty and cruelty. Just a thing of flesh and blood, the same as every other. He could hear their whispered warnings of mind-flayers and drider, hear their murmurs of other tunnels and the caverns that led up to the surface. That had helped him find his way. That, and the messages scratched into the rock by those that had come before him. 

_Here be darkdwarves. Before you the tunnel is unstable. To the east three days without water. Walk away from the voices. Don’t pass under the stalactites. Have courage._

Have courage. 

He wasn’t quite sure what summer was, only that that the creatures of the world were preparing. That the trees were waking up, that animals gorged themselves after the vast emptiness of winter. It seemed a time of anticipation, an oncoming time of plenty. In a way, it made sense. The drow had stability in the Underdark- constant darkness, constant climate, constant flows of food and water. The Overworld was a place of flux and change. 

Summer seemed like it was a time of light. Even this deep in the valley, even with all the leaves whispering over him, the sunlight sometimes burned his shoulders and made his eyes sting.

If he was to survive summer, he needed a house. Somewhere to stockpile food, rather than foraging as he went and eating only as much as he could carry. Somewhere he could start to repair his poor torn tunic. A reliable place to retreat to when the sun grew too bright. How strange, to think of a house and not have it be some looming edifice with dozens of rooms and secret corridors and seething tensions. 

Already he had investigated three and discarded them as being too close to the road, too far away from water, too easy to be trapped in. The range of choice made him heady. Space was limited in the underdark, and drow had to make to with whatever little they could scrape for themselves. 

But here, here he was nearly overwhelmed with options. Why, this cave here could have fit three whole families, assuming one didn’t kill off the other two. And it was a prime location at that, nicely elevated and set deep into the trees, hard to find unless one knew where one was going. A river gurgled past on one side, filling pools as it tumbled down the hill, and the otters had told him the waters were full of fish. 

Yes, he thought, squinting into the corners. He could see some tiered rocks there at the back that would be perfectly fine for storing he sadly ragged cloak, and a stock of fruit and roots and dried meat. Next winter he would be a fat and happy drow, rather than shivering miserably in some pathetic little scoop. 

And better yet, this cave had pets in it. 

He hopped back out of reach as a cave spider snapped at him, scolding it. These ones were completely wild, small and brown, but he was entirely sure he could domesticate them within a few generations. He rummaged into his pack and tossed a dead rabbit into the spiders web as he passed. The four of them immediately descended on the feast, tearing it apart amongst themselves. 

Sooner or later they would learn to associate him with food, and from there he could start to train them to come to hand. Drow nobles in the underdark often hunted in the outlying tunnels with small leaping spiders, not so different from these. He had often longed for such a little companion, but he was a mere commoner. He couldn’t possibly afford one, never mind that it would be stolen from him, or that a noble might kill him on the spot for daring to have one. 

He climbed up onto a rock shelf at the back of the cave and lay down, closing his eyes. It felt safe enough and he could surely train the spiders to weave a web across the main entrance and catch anyone that tried to attack him. Spiders didn’t eat very much, and he could use the silk to spin bandages and cloth. 

And perhaps next year, next summer, he would follow that road and see where it went. 

It was not so very much. But it was enough for him, and enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this come find me at HappyOrogeny over on Tumblr and Twitter!


End file.
